‘Ishrat part of failed India module’

Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, which had masterminded the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, stripped Muzammil Bhat of his portfolio as commander for South India operations after his the module failed following the killings of Ishrat Jahan and Pranesh Pillai alias Javed Gulam Sheikh in an alleged police encounter, an officer said.

“Ishrat was an alleged member of Muzammil’s LeT module and was radicalised and converted to jihad by her friend and accomplice Javed at the behest of Muzammil. She was reportedly caught in the terror web by Javed,” said an officer on condition of anonymity.

Daood Gilani alias David Coleman Headley had told the team of National Investigation Agency (NIA) officers, who had interrogated him in 2010 in the Chicago prison, that Ishrat was recruited and converted to terrorism by Sheikh.

In their report, the NIA had quoted Headley in paragraph 168, in which he allegedly stated that in late 2005, the top LeT leader Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi had introduced Muzammil (Bhat) to him as a Lashkar commander, whose every big “project” had ended in a failure.

He had added that Ishrat Jahan module was also one of Muzammil’s “botched up” operations.

“While the top LeT commanders — Hafiz Saeed and Lakhvi — directly coordinated the 2008 Mumbai serial terror attacks, which killed 166 people, with the support of the Inter Services Intelligence, Muzammil was instructed to plan terror attacks in South India. The LeT took away that role from him after Ishrat along with Javed, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar was killed on the outskirts of Ahmedabad in an alleged shootout with the police on June 15, 2004,” the officer said.